


Curse of the Camera-rang

by Nitrobot



Series: VenomCat Stories [2]
Category: Spider-Man (Comicverse), The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, Venom (Comics)
Genre: Boomerang also swears a lot, Boomerang sucks at life, But that's why I love him, Gen, Humor, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 09:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: "Goddammit, if I’d gotten a picture ofthatinstead I could’ve gotten off scot-free and with a nice paycheck. But no, I had to get one of someone not currently locked up in a max-sec penitentiary. And now he’s here, and he’s pissed, and he’s gonna eat me....Least I won’t need to worry about rent anymore."A week after Fred Myers, AKA Discount Bullseye, AKA Boomerang, managed to get the first (and so far only) picture of New York's newest supervillain couple, Venom pays him and his friends a visit.





	Curse of the Camera-rang

**Author's Note:**

> While I was still writing 'Black, White And Red All Over' I read through the Superior Foes of Spider-Man (which is 10/10 so go read it if you haven't already), and from the very first issue I knew I wanted to include the disaster team that is Boomerang and co. somehow. I decided to keep this as a 'sidestory' epilogue of sorts, since it has a much different format and style from the rest of BWRAA (and pretty much everything else I've ever written; I've never ever written a fic before in first person *or* present tense, but I like Boomerang's character so much that I wanted to get his personality shining through as much as possible here).

Venom. This guy, right? You’d think he’d be grateful, having someone to show off that even he, a big gross alien monster, can get laid, but what do I get for my generous and _free-of-charge_ publicity service? A commision payment? A ‘get-out-of-being-eaten-free’ card? Maybe even a thank-you note covered in slobber?

Hahaaa, you obviously don’t know how my luck runs. Nah, he barges in, ruins my winning streak at blackjack, spills the last of the booze all over the floor, and breaks my favourite boomerang. Just snatches it out the air and bites it in half! Just because it ‘happened’ to be flying right towards his face and, okay, I admit, it might have been loaded with more than a healthy daily dose of explosives. But that’s why it was my favourite!

 _Sigh,_ rest in peace, Explodey… and rest in peace me, if I don’t figure out real quick how to escape from razor-lined jaws with most of my bones still intact. Somehow he’d gotten my hand in his mouth (probably cause I was trying to save Explodey), and somehow he hadn’t crushed it into pulp just yet.  

“Boomerang, you idiot!” Beetle says, shouting over Venom’s snarls that rumbled around my wrist. “Let go of the cards!”

My blackjack hand is still in my fingers, the ace caught between Venom’s teeth. I _could_ pull myself free if I release it… and lose $500 to Beetle in the process.

“Hell no! This is my winning hand!” I try to wrench Venom’s jaw open again, just enough to save my streak if not all my fingers, but my careful efforts were all in vain. Since I wasn’t gonna listen to her, Beetle took it upon herself to fly right into me (with Overdrive and Shocker tucked wriggling under her shoulders) and knock me away from the giant goo monster. I actually felt the cards tearing in half, as if I was personally ripping apart $500 worth of bills. Goddammit, how am I gonna pay rent now?!

Fucking Beetle. I didn’t even invite her, _Overdrive_ dragged her over. I think he’s still hung up on her, ever since she started hooking up with Speed Demon. Not that I can blame him, I mean, _Speed Demon_ ? Really?! He’s barely a step above Shocker! Like, c’mon, you’re really gonna sleep with a guy whose power is that he’s _fast_ ? I don’t even need to make the joke. But I will, anyway. Right after I get out of this. Right to Demon’s face. Assuming he still _has_ a face after-

Oh. He’s vanished. Of course he has. And he’s taken the entire betting pool with him. I can see a trail of bills leading through the man-shaped hole in the wall, right next to the much larger Venom-shaped hole that Beetle had tackled us all through, leaving us sprawled on the street outside.

Four against one, then. Four against Venom. He’s coming after us, collapsing the entire wall as he forces his way through it. The grains of plaster and wood raining down just… soak right into him. He never stops shining black, reflecting my own face and- Christ, do I really look like that when I’m scared? Eesh, maybe the other three are onto something with covering their whole faces… of course Shocker is pissing himself, but at least you can’t tell behind all the quilting. You _can_ tell by how he’s cowering at Beetle’s ankles, wishing and wishing he’d brought his gauntlets with him and not left them behind in case Demon tricked him into putting them up as something to bet against (again). With no vehicles nearby Overdrive is pretty much useless (no surprise there), so he’s trying to hide behind Beetle’s wings. For some reason she isn’t moving them, and that’s the only reason I’m not trying to make a run for it. She’s the one out of all of us most capable of escaping, and she’s standing her ground. Maybe waiting for Daddy Tombstone to show up and sort everything out, and God I fucking hoped so. Let someone else big and scary deal with the _other_ big and scary standing in the rubble that was once our living room.

Just… standing there.

Staring.

Drooling, a lot (ew).

Staring... at me. _Me_.

Oh shit. Maybe he can only see me if I move… am I shaking? Something’s chattering in my mouth and if it’s my teeth- _ow._ Yep. Just bit my tongue. Nice one, Fred. Oh Christ, he must be pissed about the picture. But how the hell did he know it was me? I mean, yeah my name is right there on the paper but I didn’t exactly put “AKA Boomerang, villain extraordinaire and sexiest man alive” on there too. Maybe I should have done that anyway. Or… maybe I can pretend to be someone else! Like Bullseye! Yeah, he’s just an even more lame Me! I can pull that off no prob-!

**“Frederick Myers.”**

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck nevermind, he’s done his homework. And he's come closer. So, so much closer. I feel his breath chasing mine away as it batters against me. I feel Beetle’s heel in my spine and alien drool on my face, and I know that, as per usual, whatever happens next is gonna be all my fault. I wipe my face and push myself upright with what little dignity there's still left to go around.

“Y...y-yeah…?”

Venom cocks his head, probably as surprised as I am that I actually admitted to it. He licks his teeth, and I know they’ll be chewing on my arms in seconds if I try to make a move. Just as well all I’ve got on me is the useless- well, even more useless- boomerangs.

 **“You’re the one who took the first picture of us and Black Cat,”** he says, and it would be enough of an accusation without it coming from a throat scrubbed with sandpaper- and without him holding up the picture in question, right there on the front of last week’s Daily Bugle. I thought it was a pretty good one at the time, all things considered. What I _hadn’t_ considered was that it was the only one anyone had managed to grab of those two, and therefore I should have charged a lot more for it. But, after the night I’d gone through, I just wanted enough for a week full of pizza. I nod uselessly and try to gulp down last night’s slices, before they made a reappearance all over the ground. Not just from being fucking terrified of Venom, surprisingly that’s only a small part of the urge to vomit.

Cause that night… the one where I found the lovebirds (love magpies? Love skunks? The whole black/white thing can’t be a coincidence, is all I’m saying). That night is not one that I like to remember. I can hear poor Shocker whimpering at just the mention of it (sure, I locked him in the trunk of a car and left it in the bottom of the Hudson one time, but that don’t mean I can’t be sympathetic). Dealing with the likes of the Chameleon, I thought was bad enough. The whole ‘can become anyone at anytime’ thing was witchcraft as far as I was concerned, so I did the smart thing for once and tried to find a mastermind that paid well, didn’t want to take over the whole goddamn world, and didn’t dress like he was in a slasher movie.

Then I found Norman Osborn. Just because I said I ‘tried’ to find one didn’t mean I was successful. At all.

But hell, I thought the fact that he wasn’t dressed in green when he took me on was a good sign. So busy looking for green, I didn’t spot the red flags. Or the red hood.

So much red… after I fucking find out that witchcraft actually _does_ exist! And it can bring people back to life! People and _Carnage!_ Fucking _CARNAGE!_ Jesus fuck! I didn’t sleep all week! I’m still not convinced that I’m even still alive! All I have for proof of it all is the one boomerang I lost to making Norman’s glider crash and burn...

Goddammit, if I’d gotten a picture of _that_ instead I could’ve gotten off scot-free _and_ with a nice paycheck. But no, I had to get one of someone _not_ currently locked up in a max-sec penitentiary. And now he’s here, and he’s pissed, and he’s gonna eat me.

...Least I won’t need to worry about rent anymore.

“I… I-I did.” I clear my throat as I stare at the paper instead of the grinning maw of death and drool before me, buying myself just a few more seconds to figure out whether I really wanted to live or not. “A-A-And might I just say… _impeccable_ taste, Mr Venom. I think you both make a _lovely_ couple. You know she once stole three hundred million dollars from me?” I missed out the part about me trying to bang her too, but even then Beetle’s heel is on me again, this time stabbing me right in the ass. A _literal_ pain in the ass. How fitting.

“When the hell did _you_ have that much money?!” she demands, as if her dad didn’t consider three hundred million as anything more than just pocket change.

“It was the Doctor Doom painting,” I hiss back, speaking without unclenching my teeth as if that would somehow successfully tell her to shut the fuck up before she got us all killed (that was usually my job and like hell was I letting her steal it from me a second time).

“I thought Doom stole that back from us…” Overdrive must be feeling pretty safe behind Beetle to be questioning me like that. Maybe just feeling overconfident cause he has a good view of her butt. I’d kick his later, assuming I still had legs to kick with by then.  

**“How did you do it?”**

FUCKING HELL! I look away for one second and Venom is up in my face again! God, he’s _slobbering_ , it’s getting all over me even when I’ve flinched away, and I just fucking washed this suit! I try really, _really_ hard not to smell his breath as I gulp down my lungs.

“H...How did I…?” How did I survive this long? How did I end up with all these losers? Well, that’s a long story. Seventeen issues worth of story, in fact. Go read it and then get back to me. Not that I was about to tell Venom that, since I don’t think that’s what he was asking about anyway.

He narrows his eye-things at me, looking so much like Rorschach test that I wonder if I wasn’t committed a long time ago and this is all just a hallucination. Then he jabs a claw again at the newspaper, tearing right through the picture that’s about to get me killed.   

 **“How did you get a camera at this angle, this high up off the ground?”** he asks. It takes me a few more seconds to remember what the answer is, and to decide whether or not giving it to him would only make him more angry.

In the end, I figure that not even I can do much more to piss him off at this point.

“...Camera-rang,” I tell him, somehow without stuttering. His left eye retracts into itself.  

 **“Camera-rang?”** he repeats, somehow without spitting.

“Camera-rang,” my team echo in deadpan, none of them even trying to not groan around it. It’s probably the only time they’ve all joined together in unison on something, and it’s to be disappointed in me. Figures. Probably doesn’t help that I’ve pulled out the genius device in question- that is, a Boomerang with a camera aperture stuffed into the middle of it- just to help prove to Venom that I wasn’t doing anything creepy nearby.

“See? Camera-rang!” I say, holding it up so each side of it hides how much I’m trying not to cry.

Now I know what you’re thinking, cause it’s the exact same thing Venom’s thinking as he looks at me- Fred, what the fuck were you doing sneaking around a rooftop spying on two supervillains making out? Isn’t that really creepy? Are you a creep, Fred? First of all; yes, I admit it, so you can’t hold that against me. But that has nothing to do with this. See, the Camera-rang can take videos for use in beautiful blackmail plots, _or_ it can be used for some real lazy aerial photography. It takes a stream of pictures as it flies, and when it comes back you can marvel at how beautiful and blurry the city is. I only got a good look at Venom and Black Cat cause it got lodged into a wall and took one last shot before it shut down. As for why I threw it in the first place? Well, I panicked on the way out of Central Park as it was _burning to the fucking ground_ and it was the only boomerang I had left on me. Since I was lucky enough that night to hit one guy on the rebound, I figured I wanted another one airborne just in case someone tried to grab me. But it never came back, and I had to fight off people as desperate as me with my bare hands like some kind of savage. _Then,_ once I was out of immediate danger of death by psychopath, I had to climb up ten flights of stairs just to find it again, and thanks to the events of today I’m convinced that it absolutely was not worth it. Both the stair-climbing and escaping-danger things. Cause I here I am right back at square one, staring up at a very tall, very sharp frown through the viewfinder as if it’ll protect me.

 **“We really hate gimmicks,”** Venom snarls, and I can see him stretching his jaw back and curling out his tongue oh fuck OH FUCK-!

“Before you do anything I’ll regret!” I’m not proud to say that I shrieked loud enough to break whatever glass was still left intact around me as I stumbled back and covered my head in my hands. But I’m an honest guy, so that’s what I’m saying I did. I’m _still_ shrieking some seconds later, so I can only assume I’ve somehow managed to disable Venom with the sheer sonic force of my plea. As my voice breaks off I peek out from behind my fingers and- nope, he’s still standing. Still staring at me. Still licking his lips. Fuck, I’ve only stalled him. He’s waiting for me to speak. To make whatever offer that’ll keep me alive...

Don’t do it, Fred. Whatever you’re thinking, however desperate you are to get home in one piece, _do not_ try to bargain with the cannibal alien monster-

“I… I can… how about I take more for you?” God dammit, God FUCKING dammit, Fred! “With your permission, of course!” I go on, STUPIDLY, so SO FUCKING STUPIDLY, digging an even BIGGER grave for myself! “I mean, no one else has my patented exclusive Camera-rang technology, so no one _else_ can get you and your lady at such good angles!” I don’t even know if what I’m saying is true. I don’t even care. I’m just saying whatever fucking springs to mind at this point. What the fuck! What the FUCK, Fred?! Beetle and Shocker and Overdrive, they’re all asking me it just as I’m asking myself over and over, it’s all over their faces, and I don’t know how to answer!

Just eat me, Venom. Just get it over with. The sooner I’m digested, the sooner my funeral can happen, the sooner I can watch everyone pretend to be sad from my place of honour in Hell-

 **“That... would be useful for us.”** Venom is grinning, and it’s even more horrifying than seeing the back of his throat. I can’t believe it actually worked. I _refuse_ to believe it worked. He’s just toying with me. Playing with his food. Making me _think_ I’ve managed to get out of this.

Unless… I really am just that good? I seriously don’t know which option is preferable, if either of them _can_ be preferred in a situation like this.

“I’m... glad you agree, Mr Venom.” I’m somehow lying and telling the truth all at once as I pull myself to my feet. “After all, I-I only want to show this city that you and Black Cat aren’t so bad after all, like me and my associates here-!”

 **“Of course,”** he interrupts me with another growl that comes close and goes right through my skull, **“we will expect royalties from this arrangement.”**

Here comes the trap. Here comes the snare closing in on me, and I’ve got to pretend that I can’t see it. “Uh.... I… s-sure, yeah, of course! How, uh… how much were you thinking?”

He pretends to give it thought for a moment. **“We think... seventy percent is more than fair.”**

I almost snap the Camera-rang in half as my fists clench. “Seventy?! Jesus, and _I’m_ the villain here?!”

“Do what he says, Fred,” Shocker so helpfully hisses near my ankle, “before he eats seventy percent of your body!”

Even though I have no-one to blame for this but myself, I still want to kick him. But then I’d have to go near Beetle, and then I’d hear her laughing behind her mask. “I, uh… guess we have a deal, sir.” I don’t know if I should stretch my hand out and risk losing it again. What does alien goo skin feel like, anyway? Should I know? Do I _want_ to kn- Oh God he’s got my hand anyway, ew, ew EW IT’S SO SLIMY! OH GOD, BLACK CAT, HOW CAN YOU BE INTO THIS!?

 **“Good.”** Venom sucks air through his grin as he finally releases me from the squirming handshake, and I try not to make my disgust too obvious. **“We will return in a week. Don’t disappoint us.”**

I nod and try to wipe my hand clean behind my back as Venom walks past me and then the others, yet it won’t stop shaking. I face him as he nods an almost-friendly farewell to Beetle. “Uh… mind if I get some pointers on where to find you and Cat in the meantime?”

He pauses, and turns again to face me. Every single inch of him looks amused, even his churning skin. **“We enjoy our privacy, you understand. But we're sure you’ll manage to track us down. After all, you have the technology** **_and_ ** **the motivation for it.”** He flicks a claw towards my cursed Camera-rang, patronising enough even without one last smirk before he finally disappears. Literally, he just jumps up and there he is already halfway up the nearest building. He’s long gone over the roof before I accept that I’ve managed to survive this encounter, and longer still before the new conditions set upon my life fully sink in.  

“What... the hell just happened?” Shocker is content to keep lying on the floor, only pulling himself to something he can lean his back against. I was hoping he or one of the other two could have answered that for me. Mostly cause I just don’t want to admit what I’ve gotten myself into.

“I... think I just became Venom’s personal paparazzi.” I look at Shocker, then Overdrive, even to Beetle for any kind of correction that doesn’t come. “Am I screwed?”

“I mean…” Overdrive rubs the base of his neck through his helmet.

“It could be worse…” Shocker tugs at his quilted face. Beetle looks at them both, and pulls her mask off all the way so I can see just how much disbelief she’s in.  

“You are _so_ fucking screwed, Fred.” In that regard, she really should have been used to it by now. After all, she was so firm in the belief that I always fucked up that she’d bet $500 on it.

$500 that I’ve still lost, and still need to get back.

Fuck, I better get to work fast.


End file.
